Goodbye Mister Anderson
by ship-to-shore
Summary: Where does Neo start and Thomas Anderson end? And who has any say in the matter...


Good-bye Mister Anderson.

Neo was running for his life. He could hear the ringing of the telephone. Connection to his body and the real world. To Trinity and to the crew of the Neb. Why he thought of Trinity before the rest of the crew he had no idea. Even Morpheus. The one who had shown him the truth about the Matrix. The truth that he had thought he had been searching for all his life. Now he was not too sure.

Because of Trinity, of the woman he loved.

It was almost as if he had been searching for her all his life and not Morpheus, the Matrix.

Was Trinity his destiny more than that of being the one?

Was being the one more to do with her than it was him? Had he gone wrong somewhere in his life?

Was that why he was now here being chased?

Not that he had time to think about it now. Not that he had any time to think about anything the last few days.

The only thing that he knew was that his noodle was well and truly baked and he had more questions than answers. The only thing that kept on going through his head was the line.

"Who is number one?"

Which was from an old TV show. Not that helped much as he ran towards the still ringing phone, which seemed to get getting ever further away more than anything.

For a computer program Agent Smith did not know that he had been given a sub-routine that let the human race piss him off. However Thomas Anderson had managed to. But these human's were predictable and even a byte would know where Mister Anderson was headed and they would be waiting. Soon there would be one less human virus littering the Matrix with its vile stench.

But not even he knew that all Neo ran towards was his destiny...

Trinity...

How was it that you just knew? Knew that the moment that you saw someone, be it from across the street, a bar that you just knew that he was the one.

Not the One, one. But the one one, the one for you. The one who you wanted to stay the rest of your life with. The one who you would die for.

But then there was knowing things that were tearing you apart. Being told all about what would happen by the Oracle. As she had said to Neo all had happened except one thing. That he would die to become the One. But how that would happen.

But now as she tried to watch two monitors at once with the rest of the surviving crew of the Neb.

Everything hung in the balance as Neo ran for the exit.

Life for them was but a button push away, with an electro magnetic pulse.

But Neo was still in the Matrix. Was that what the Oracle meant? That Neo's death would be by her own hand? How would that make him the One to save them all if he was dead? Killed by them to save their own skins?

But then in a way that answered her first question. Would She kill him out of love to save him from the Agents? To what they would do to him when they caught up with him? And Agents always were smart and seemed to be one step ahead. They had even let the first One die.

As had been said. 'We get everyone killed.'

The leader before Neo who said that he would be born again into the Matrix. This time it looked as if it was going to be quicker thanks to a snake in the grass that had betrayed them. Someone who they should never have trusted. But should Neo have trusted them?

That being the One that would free the Matrix would only happen because of his death as the Oracle had said. A death that would happen because she loved him? No Trinity would not believe that.

Because she loved him, Neo, the One, what ever she would not let him die. Because she loved him. She would not kill him because she loved him. As she tore her eyes away from the Matrix monitor and down to Neo's she whispered.

"Run Neo, run." But all she could do was just wait and hold her breath...

It had would be said in days to come. That knowing the path, and walking the path were a very different thing.

As she finished the washing up after cooking some more of her soft, crunchy cookies for her young prodigies she could not help but think about events that were happening in and about the Matrix at this very moment in time. Scenes that had she had foretold years ago when the rebellion to the machines was in it's infancy. Now it was not just Neo that was walking a path of learning. But also for Morpheus, Trinity and soon the machines that ran the Matrix themselves. Even they were about to get a very unwelcome up-grade.

It was some months ago now that she had held a private audience for them. Before Neo was contacted. Truths were told of what would happen when the found the one that would free them all. But she had not disclosed it all. The Oracle was never a woman of many words. She just told enough.

How they would react to the whole truth. Would they then doubt themselves?

When it came down to the wire? This thought was directed at the whole crew. Would Morpheus been so determined to find the One if he knew at what cost? The loss of almost half his crew? The betrayal that happened inside the Matrix by Cypher.

The doubt that Trinity was no doubt having now.

Knowing that she had told her that Neo was going to die, if he was the One. Not that by the look of things that she believed he was at the time she had first been told that they were going to contact him. But once her path was complete she would know.

The Oracle was not a woman of many words. But what she said she meant. As Neo had also found out when he had had his audience with her.

It had been here in her very kitchen that she had been asked by him...

"You don't think I'm the One do you?"

She had just smiled and shaken her head. That could have been read two ways. Her way was.

'I don't think you're the One. I know you're the One.'

But Neo's path was running in a different direction than hers. But in the end they would both get to the same place. Just all that she could say now was... If she was asked was...

Keep on running...

"I could use some help here!" Neo shouted down the phone to the outside world as he tried to find an entrance that to him looked like a dead end. Quite literally for him if he slowed his pace one iota with Agent Smith and company in hot pursuit...

For Morpheus it was almost as if he was in the Matrix.

As Neo had shown he could slow down the passage of time in the Matrix.

So it would seem to Morpheus now that time was going ever so slowly as Neo ran for his life and the Sentinels made their final approach on to the Neb.

He had always known that Neo was the One all he had to do was to have time to prove it to the rest of the crew, and to even Neo himself. But and now he was proving it and soon the mechanical world would know it as well. 

"Left!" Came directions, as Neo almost turned full circle and he charged through the door and onwards to where he knew the hard-line and escape would be. But that was also where Agent Smith was waiting.

For a computer program Agent Smith did not know why he had been given a sub-routine that let the human race piss him off. However Thomas Anderson had managed to. But these human's were predictable and even a byte would know where Mister Anderson was headed and they would be waiting. And that was what he had done. And a smile played on his lips. As he saw the shocked expression on the human's face as the third bullet hit his chest. Surprised to see his own blood as he slumped onto the floor. Humans always surprised by the littlest of things.

"Goodbye Mister Anderson." Said Smith with quite a bit of smugness in his voice as he turned and walked away to join his fellow agents. With Mister Anderson gone soon he would be free of this zoo. For once in his life this AI was going in the right direction.

Shock, Neo was in shock. Well he was dead. What more of a shock could you have? Agent Smith had more or less told him so with the first bullet. He had just put in the other two to ram his point home.

How could this happen was his last thought as he hit the floor.

He had been told that he could control what was happening to him while in the Matrix. As well as everyone, or should that be every bit of code that was around him. However he could still feel the shock to his system as he slumped to the ground.

But still he could feel that he was in two places. By the sound and feel of it, he would rather be with Trinity than here. But getting to Trinity. That seemed to be the hard part.

As heart and mind he pulled himself together to get to where he wanted to go. To, make it so. His mind took a few illogical steps back into life as the fact and fiction of the Matrix became merged.

He stood on the ship of the Starship Enterprise as it circled Deep Space 9. On the way to meet it's Nemesis. But he was more interested that as he looked about the Bridge...

Trinity was at his side.

He stood on the bridge of the Andromada as it fell into a black hole. Squishing him somewhat. But he was unafraid as...

He knew that Trinity would pull him out. As Trinity was at his side now. Telling him that she loved him. Telling him that he could not be dead...

Just like his computer the other year...

He had just downloaded the new star wars film but it had fried his hard-drive instead. Costing way more than going to see the film first hand. But who cared?

For he had Trinity had at his side. Who wanted to think about a film now, or even a computer program? Like the one he was in now. The one in which Agent Smith had just pissed him off.

All except Trinity, in the end, was fiction.

The Matrix was fiction.

If you did not like the fiction what did you do? Well, you just changed the plot...

And that was something that he was just about to do.

'No!' Trinity could not believe it. Neo was dead. He could not be dead. She was going to show him Zion, show him the world. She was going to show him just how much she had grown to love him.

Heck, she had not even had time to tell him how much she loved him. Dam Agent Smith, dam him to hell. Could send a computer program to hell? Trinity had never asked that question before. It had never crossed her mind, over the years she had fought against the Matrix. She had never had a reason to. Until now.

Her heart raced which was strange in itself. It had done that ever since she had first seen Neo inside the Matrix. But, she was Trinity. She was always the calm, calculating one. Always thinking things through. Never making a rash judgement. She had waited. What for she had no idea. Now she could not think of anything else to do, but to tell Neo everything. Tell him the one thing that he could not do now. No, he could not die. No he could not die, because she loved him.

Was Neo the One? Morpheus had been adamant almost from the word go that Neo was the One. She held back first because she did not believe. Then because she was too scared to believe. That would mean that he would die to save them. But that was one thing that she would not let happen. Heck if Neo died she would go and drag his arse back herself from heaven so that she could be with him.

Her heart raced even faster as she kissed Neo. Faster still when he took his first breath and his monitors sprang back into life.

'Now go and kick arse!' She thought to him. As she kissed him again. Just to make sure he got the message.

Later...

The sentinels scattered around the wreaked deck, dead at their feet. She did not care about what could have happened.

She did not think about her past. 

Even about Matrix for a time.

All that mattered was for her and Neo.

Something had happened inside of there. To both her and Neo. They had come together. Her outside of the Matrix.

Him inside. Nothing would ever part them. That was something that Trinity would make sure would never happen.

And for Neo that was something that he already knew. For even in the fiction of the Matrix he knew that he had Trinity with him. That was something that Thomas Anderson never had.

The end?

Or is it a beginning...? 


End file.
